Research summary

Suzi Gage

I am interested in investigating recreational drug use, and what impact these behaviours can have on mental health outcomes. For my PhD, I am using the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children to investigate associations between adolescent tobacco and cannabis use, and later psychotic experiences and depression. As well as observational data, I hope to use genetic functional polymorphisms associated with tobacco use in a Mendelian Randomisation design to try and ascertain causality.

Biography

I am currently leading a workstream aiming to assess whether associations seen between lifestyle behaviours (such as smoking, alcohol use or illicit drug use) and mental health outcomes are causal in nature. This workstream is part of Professor Marcus Munafo's programme in the MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit.

My PhD used the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children to investigate associations between adolescent tobacco and cannabis use, and later psychotic experiences and depression.